Kiang sat at the console and attempted to understand what each control was for while desperately trying to ignore the searing pain that was wracking his body. The Universal Translator apparently could not handle the written Elasian Language as well. He thought it was odd that a race far superior in technology and the creators of the Universal Translator, had neglected this one thing. He dared a glance at Anna who was attending to her unconscious father and pondered for a moment that it was on purpose.
He watched her carefully walk to the wall and place her hand over an icon. A bed slid out of the wall and Kiang attempted to commit that symbolic representation to memory. She grabbed something out of a drawer that opened next to her, then returned to her father. When his mind registered Anna walking back to her father, with intent to move him by herself, he groaned with pain from all of his bones to stand up and assist her with placing Dohlma Tor onto the bed. He felt foolish as he collapsed on the floor from the agonizing pain in his legs.
Anna glared momentarily at him before her features softened. “The Ja’Desh were on the other side of the door trying to remove our skeletons from our bodies and increase their numbers. It is how they reproduce in this universe. They almost succeeded if the Thejarins had not sent out a call for help.” Anna chuckled to herself softly, “He will never cease to amaze me on how he knows where to be and when for that last minute save.” Her eyes glazed over at her own memory of the man with a blue box.
She was six when she was introduced to one of the greatest Elasian secrets: their universe held the portals to many other universes and realities of existence. The entire galaxy was a giant temporal gateway to other realities and there were races of people who could cross those barriers at will. “So many universes have the legend of the humanoid with a blue box that it is unfathomable if he is even aware that they have crossed into our universe so many times.” Anna said out loud to no one in particular, “and it means I have an unpleasant task ahead of me in my future.”
She looked down at her father on the floor and pushed her own pain aside to move him to a biobed. She heard Kiang groan, as he attempted to stand. In her commanding voice, she told him to stay still and she would get to him next, then watched Kiang lose consciousness from the pain. After straightening her father’s body out on the floor, she placed several disks about him before activating them. He was surrounded by a dull blue light and Anna was able to lift him from the floor with little effort then transfer him to the bed. She deactivated the disks and turned on the biobed monitoring panel. She shook her head. It was worse than what she had expected. Every bone in his body was shattered and the muscles and ligaments meant to hold the skeletal structure in place were torn. His vitals were weak, he was dying. With great sadness in her spirit, she put her hand to his head to feel his love for her was so strong he would die to save his daughter. After a moment longer , she engaged the biobed in a stasis field.
With that done, she turned her attention to her Klingon Guardian laying crumpled on the floor and repeated the process with him. He was also dealing with many shattered bones and torn ligaments, although his were not life threatening. Just highly painful. Anna placed Kiang in stasis as well and administered a hypospray of Metorapan to herself. It wasn’t long before she felt relief and confined herself to a chair for the rest of her self assigned tasks, as she too had shattered bones in her body. She looked at her father and Kiang, so peaceful and wondered how she was still functioning and they were not. She kept an eye on her biosigns, in her peripheral vision, and attempted to fathom how she was healing at a rapid rate.
Her first task was to scan where the Shadira Nebula once was for any survivors and was shocked to find twelve biosigns already in the transporter buffer. She hesitated with dropping the temporal field to finish the transporter process. Could she handle twelve more people to care for and an indeterminate amount of time till help arrived? She calculated power consumption, supplies, bio beds with stasis fields, and carefully looked at each of the life signs just as they were entering the transport. With a heavy sigh, she keyed the transporter into an infinite feedback loop and to potentially save all of the lives versus having to decide which few would live and who would die.
As she was about to go to her next task, she noted a thirteenth biosign was just added that was different from all the others. Her fingers worked quickly to isolate the biosignature from everyone else that was in there as she recognized her own DNA sequencing. “This should be interesting,” she said out loud as she moved the controls to rematerialize the new biosignature.
With her heart pounding in her throat, she gasped as a male version of her now stood in front of her. “Hello, Anna. I’m Cristöpher, your brother. We have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it. I expended a large amount of energy to get here before you closed the Shadira Nebula Rift.” He stated in deeper harmonics that mimicked her own voice.
His eyes mimicked her swirls of Tamalian blue blossoms. His reddish hair was cut short and had a wave to it all on its own. He parted his hair the same as hers. She was about to struggle to stand up to see if their heights were the same, as they both had a wispy build to them, when he strode over and placed his hands on her shoulders to sit her back down. He unslung a bag from behind him, pulled out a device of some sort, and placed it on her head. “It should take only a few moments for your bones to mend and the rest of your physical wounds to heal. We can then deal with the emotional injuries.” He looked at his twin sister very closely, before going on, “if it makes any difference, you were born first and you were born to lead.”
Anna sat in silence for possibly the first time in her life, as she did not know what to say.
“How many were on board The Masamune?” Cristöpher asked Anna, breaking her out of her momentary shock.
“Three thousand Elasians, just as many Troyians, and nearly two thousand delegates and dignitaries.” Anna felt tears starting to well up in her eyes. “The D’kyr and Haakona both had crew compliments of almost 600 each. Besides Father, Kiang, and myself, there are twelve biosignatures in the transporter buffer.” Cristöpher looked at her and shared his empathy over the loss.
“It is okay to cry around me. Mother says, as your brother, I am immune to the effects of your tears on people.” With that he embraced his slightly older sister and allowed her to grieve for several minutes. “Come now, we have a lot to do in just a short amount of time. The Ja’Desh are going to attempt to reopen the rift and we need to be prepared to stop them.”
Anna looked around at their surroundings confused, “but, Cristöpher, this is just a life pod. We have no navigational controls or weapons.”
Cristöpher gave a wicked grin before opening his backpack once more and started pulling out devices Anna had never seen. He held up a large round disk as big as his head, “We have these and our wings.”
“Our what?” Anna asked, eyes wide and positive she had heard incorrectly.
“Enjoy the next few minutes, Anna, as mother says it is too soon for you to know this information and I will have to take the memories away.” Cristöpher stood and held out his hand to his big sister for the first time that he could remember. “Do you trust me?” He asked her.
Anna hesitated for a moment, took a self assessment to realize that she no longer hurt, and clasped her slightly smaller hand into his. “What have I got to lose?” she asked rhetorically.
Together they walked over to the door. A quick glance over her shoulder reassured her that their father and Kiang would be safe as she had an inkling that the next step was going to involve exiting the savendal into space. She could hear the rush of her heart beating in her ears as the Cristöpher grinned at her and palmed the door open causing both of them to be flushed into space with the decompression of air. Anna looked back to see the savendal grow smaller and the faint blue of a forcefield activate around the door opening. She followed her arm up to look at Cristöpher to see that his skin had turned to black and golden scales, along with wings having appeared from his back. His size now dwarfed the savendal.
She felt an odd itching sensation across her skin, as it turned to bluish silver scales and her back screamed with relief as her own set of wings erupted from her virgin skin. She could hear Cristöpher in her mind, giving her instructions of how to maneuver in this form, and it was liberating! Together they performed an intricate dance across space towards the wreckage of the three ships. Stopping at several of the larger pieces to add the disk device to them.
“These are temporal mines. We are going to create a mine field where the nebula once was. As soon as the Ja’Desh attempt to open a portal, they will detonate, and cause system wide failures in their ships. If they are as tuned into temporal devices as Mother says they are, they should cross back through the rift and their own universe.” Cristöpher explained in her mind telepathically. “You will need to get back to the savendal before that happens.” The last bite shocked Anna to realize that her brother was going to travel back into the rift. “Don’t fear, Anna. I have returned to our universe several times this way. It is one heck of an adrenaline rush each time, but survivable by us in this form.”
Anna tried to feel comfort at his words, but was also concerned how he was going to remove memories of this event if he was no longer present in it. Cristöpher chuckled. “I left a hypospray and instructions for you in the savendal. It is imperative that you use them. Promise me that you will?” Anna could only nod her head in agreement as they reached the last piece of wreckage.
Cristöpher pulled one additional disk that was slightly different out of the bag and handed it to Anna. “Place this just outside the door of the savendal before you enter. It has enough thrust to remove the lifepod out of this region of space and closer to Elas.” The crackling of red lightning started where the nebula once was and began to grow larger. “GO!” Cristöpher gave one last squeeze of Anna’s claws and shoved her towards the savendal, “Go, now! You must survive. History is dependent upon it!” Anna looked back at him one more time to see him wave at her and then balance himself on the opposite side of the wreckage. She couldn’t shake the image of him grinning and excited over the anticipated adrenaline rush.
With several strokes of her wings, she used solar dust to propel her forward with the disk grasped firmly in both claws. As she neared the savendal, she gave a forward toss to the disk, envisioned herself human, transforming to the smaller size just as she threaded herself into the door opening. She tumbled several times before getting the wind knocked out of her as she hit the control console. She reached up and flailed slightly to find the controls to close the door. Her last glimpse was of the nebula erupting in a rainbow of colors and the shock wave coming at the savendal at an alarming rate.
As the wave neared the lifepod, the thruster ignited and sent it hurtling through space, hopefully towards the Elas system. Anna laid exhausted on the floor, her skin was burning cold, and fell into a fitful slumber for an unknown amount of time.
She had visions that felt like waking dreams of her mother and father arguing. Her mother had long fiery red hair that reached to the floor. Anna felt as if she was looking at a slightly different version of herself, one without the strong masculine features of her father that was typical for Elasain royalty. She looked to her left and saw a mirror image of herself sitting next to her to recognize that it was her brother, Cristöpher. He looked at her with puffed up eyes from crying and she noticed a large cut on his head that had been attended to. She barely recalled seeing a large scar peeking out from under his hair as an adult. She sat next to him and attempted to comically fall to elicit a smile or giggle from him. When that did not work, she crawled over to him and wrapped her arms around him, somehow knowing what was about to happen.
The argument between her parents was escalating. Her father was on his knees, begging her mother to stay. Try as she might, she could not hear the name he called her. With great sadness, she watched her mother walk over, pick up Cristöpher, and then to the now familiar blue box with an older woman standing with the door open. Her mother disappeared into the box with Cristöpher, the older woman gave a knowing nod to Anna before closing the door and the box disappeared.
Young Anna sat there for a moment before crawling over to her father’s lap and putting his arms around her. He looked down at her and said words she could not hear, before beginning to cry in earnest. Anna laid her head on his chest, listened to his heartbeat, and with her small little hand, reached up to gently pat her father on his face.
Every part of her body ached. From the fog of her mind, she could hear a woman speaking to her and encouraging her to drink something. It tasted horrible, causing Anna to attempt to spit it out....
To Be Continued;